


Utility

by curi_o



Series: Pain for Jayne [19]
Category: Firefly
Genre: Content: Angst, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-08-28
Updated: 2006-08-28
Packaged: 2017-11-09 02:03:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 838
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/450030
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/curi_o/pseuds/curi_o
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There was something about sex with a reader.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Utility

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: Box

* * *

There was something about sex with a reader. It was like she could anticipate him, his movements and intentions. It made the act more a union than any he’d ever paid for.

It had started as a matter of survival. It had been a over a month since Serenity had docked anywhere decent long enough for Jayne to find companionship; the few places they had stayed for more than an hour or two, the company on offer was too scary, even for him. As a result, Jayne Cobb hadn’t sexed a live woman in over a month. He was getting twitchy.

When River locked his hatch behind her, he went hot and cold at once. It was a strange dual-vision. He was used to seeing death, when he looked at her, but now he saw Woman blanketing that death. It was too much, he thought, unfair for her to strike when he couldn’t defend himself. When she climbed onto the mattress, he shivered with fear and rage and desire and helplessness.

She slapped him. “Cease and desist!” she hissed. “You are damaging _my_ calm. You are so driven by _this_.” She grabbed him roughly through his shorts for an instant, and his eyes went wide as he moaned. “Humans are meant to be better at controlling the sexual impulse. Simon’s assessment of the girl-man seems correct.”

He tried to force his eyes closed when she lifted the hem of her sleeping gown and removed her underwear. She sat at his side, facing him, against the inside wall, one leg stretched straight over his pelvis, and he was paralyzed, staring. She growled in frustration.

“You are not inexperienced. My body cannot accommodate you in its present state.” She pulled his hand to her. He felt the hair between her thighs and froze. 

He saw River’s effort to control her temper. She looked at him as if at a small child and slowly explained, “If you do not come to your full, you will be useless on tomorrow’s job. If you let Simon die, I will kill you. Captain Daddy will push me from the nest. Serenity will fall again without warriors to defend her.”

She sounded resigned as she assured them both, quietly, “This is necessary. We are saving lives.”

It was the tired note in her voice that made him move at last. Save River’s whimper of pain when he entered her and his clumsy, but sincere, apology, neither made another sound. When she slipped from his bunk silently, he was already asleep.

Although he and the moonbrain were the only ones who knew, their couplings had evolved into a regular occurrence, a matter of maintenance: like checking the EVA suits or cleaning his guns. Though she assured him pregnancy was impossible, she insisted he use a condom and refrain from visiting “houses of ill repute.”

“I will _not_ expose myself to genital infections caught from communal semen repositories,” he had been told heatedly.

He had tried repeatedly to give her pleasure during their encounters, but she consistently halted him when she sensed his intentions. One night, several months in, she did orgasm. Though he was pleased, she told him as he rolled off her that it would not happen again. He stared at the ceiling, confused. 

Losing control meant trusting him, she explained, and she didn’t.

Jayne was stung. Her words hurt more than the blade with which she had attacked him so long ago. He realized he had come to see their interaction as a relationship. He cared for her.

River gasped and shot upright. Jayne’s head snapped toward the sound and found her looking at him in horror. 

“No,” she whispered. “Keep it to yourself. Keep it. Take it back!” She was sobbing, running from the bunk. She didn’t bother to close the hatch, didn’t try to quiet her voice as she fled through the ship.

He made to follow her when he heard the others stirring, talking low and urgent. He quickly and quietly shut the opening to his quarters. He could hear Mal murmuring with Simon and Kaylee in the corridor above as he doubled over on the floor, vomiting.

He didn’t see her alone for months. He kept himself busy, tried not to feel things. He drank more than he had _before_ , he supposed, and sought trim less. 

Some nights, when he thought of how disgusted he had made her, he thought about eating a bullet. Others, when he was drunk enough, he would reach under his bed for the memories. The underwear from that first time, the shirt she’d sliced, one of her knives from Miranda, a few strands of her hair he’d found in his sheets. He’d hidden them all in a box, tried to box her out the way she had him. 

Those nights, he could swear she slipped back in bed with him, her small form warming his larger. He fought morning on those nights, afraid that the new day breaking might be the one to break him.


End file.
